Former El Salvadoran military Col. Inocente Orlando Montano departs federal court, in Boston, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, following the first day of a sentencing hearing on immigration charges. Montano was separately indicted in Spain in 2011 for his alleged role in the 1989 slayings of six Jesuit priests. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
BOSTON (AP) — A former Salvadoran military colonel who faces war crimes accusations has been sentenced to 21 months in prison on U.S. immigration charges.
Seventy-year-old Inocente (in-oh-SENT’-ay) Orlando Montano was sentenced Tuesday in Boston after a plea that followed his 2011 arrest in Massachusetts.
Montano was once El Salvador’s vice minister of public security.
A United Nations commission previously named him a participant in a meeting to plot the slaying of a priest suspected of supporting rebels. That meeting allegedly led to the 1989 slayings of six priests and two other people in El Salvador.
Montano has denied involvement, but he was indicted by Spanish authorities in 2011 in connection with the so-called Jesuit massacre.
Montano said through a translator that he was satisfied with the sentence and hadn’t decided if he would appeal.
